This paper presents a scoring model that predicts the risk of drop-out for borrowers at a microfinance lender in Bolivia. Drop-out risk was greater for women, manufacturers, newer borrowers, and those with more arrears. Out-of-sample tests suggest that scoring may help microfinance lenders to...

This paper describes the World Trade Organization Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and supporting international guidelines. It examines the existing import risk analysis approach to determining quarantine measures used by WTO member countries and considers some...

The management of biosecurity risks (risks to the production sector, to indigenous biodiversity, and to public health) involves the exercise of extensive regulatory powers both at the border and within New Zealand. This paper reviews the Biosecurity Act 1993, paying particular attention to its...

Do housing and equity booms significantly raise the probability of extremely bad outcomes at the margin? This study addresses this question for a group of 8 East Asian countries. The main findings are the following: (i) Asset price booms in housing and equity markets, either separately or...

The Chicago Fed's Supervision and Regulation Department, in conjunction with DePaul University's Center for Financial Services, sponsored a conference on March 6 - 7, 2008. The conference brought together bankers, supervisors, and academics to focus on comprehensive risk management, an extremely...

In recent years, risk management has been of growing interest to institutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, and foundations, as well as the asset management firms that manage funds on their behalf. Traditionally, institutional investors, and particularly...

An important aspect of stakeholder management in construction projects is the contractual approach to managing risk and uncertainty. Clients need to choose an appropriate form of contract from available common options, like fixed price, design and build (D&B), and design, build, finance and...

Since privately financed infrastructure (PFI) projects are usually natural monopolies, their tariffs should be regulated to ensure socially desirable outcomes. In reality, the regulation is usually realized through tariff adjustment mechanisms. There are four basic tariff adjustment frameworks...

The built environment is full of uncertainty which leads to risk. The literature shows that there is a wide range of techniques available to deal with risk; however numerous studies have shown that only a relatively small number are used in practice. One reason for this small number is a lack of...

In view of this changing landscape, we look at the three major drivers of growth in consumer finance: auto finance, housing finance and consumer durable finance. We discuss the trends in each of these areas as well as the shortcomings which are slowing down growth. We present some of the...